Got a few hours today while the little man had a nap so decided to get the spraying done!
I used an old bank card to test the colours, masking off between each one to get a hard line for comparing.
The darkest colour is actually metallic and this means in certain light it appears much lighter and is kinda patchy. I was going to use it for the outer part of the dial but for this reason I decided not to. Instead I decided to give a coat of the flat dark grey all over accept the keyless works area, and see how it goes from there, possibly using the lighter grey on the right hand and lower left portions of the inner circle, so those needed masking off...
The masking turned out to be a lot trickier than anticipated so gave up on doing the bit on the bottom left, I figured I could always layer up I just wasn't keen to do this in case some detail is lost! Anyway, time to stick it to the top of a champagne bottle and get spraying.
First coat...
It looked a lot lighter than expected which I was worried about at first but it darkened as it dried thankfully. Once I took the masking off I actually really liked the bare metal underneath...
The contrast is really great! So I decided to scrape the paint off the other area that is lighter in colour on the gen and see how it looks...
I really liked how it looked, but the bare brass(?) was just the wrong colour. If only it had been steel, I'd have stopped right there and put it back together, but alas it was not to be. It did make me decide NOT to use the lighter grey colour as I had planned, and instead just retouch these areas with silver paint to get rid of the brassy colour...
And the finished article looks really good I think, changes colour slightly in different lights just as every good dial should...
Did a quick mock up before closing her up to decide if it needed anything else...
To my eye it looks pretty good, and definitely a huge improvement over the standard rep!
So I closed her up properly. Unfortunately I couldn't get two of the strap screws to go in. I don't have the 4 point spline tool so got them out with tweezers but they need to be driven in which I can't do with tweezers, I have one on order but it's not due till mid Jan so will have to wait till then to put it back together properly. It's a shame but a minor thing really!
What do you all think?! I think I'm gonna have to get one in steel too!!!
If I were to do it again I'd probably do a better job and would probably spray it all silver first, then mask up and spray it grey, just to get a better finish on the silver areas, but for a first attempt I'm really happy with the results!!
DC